AN: Disclaimer! Sherlock Holmes and all recognisable characters belong to Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the particular ones I am using were re-imagined by the likes of the BBC. I do not own anything you recognise, I am just stealing other peoples' creations, torturing them, and handing them back slightly worse for wear (though let's be honest, nothing I do to them will compare with what the BBC writers will, this is like a holiday for the poor guys).
PLEASE READ! I feel like there should be some form of trigger warning here but I'm not sure what for – trauma and parent death, certainly, bullying if that counts, hints of past abuse in later chapters (more specific warnings will be put before those specific chapters). I don't pretend to know anything about psychology and for this fic I have largely gone from how I imagine a child such as Sherlock Holmes would react in this situation and then googling (a lot of googling) PTSD in children. (this is the end of the need-to-read, you can skip to the story now if you want)
I apologise now for any inaccuracies in this (and there are bound to be hundreds) – if any of you out there have experience with this or tips/pointers on symptoms and effects of PTSD in children and selective mutism I would be forever grateful for your input. I am also clueless (aside from what google can tell me) about foster parenting and how the general process works; I have tried to be as vague as possible because the process is not at all important to the story, but again if you know anything that could help or I have done something drastically wrong, please let me know as I'd like to be as accurate as possible.
I am, for the purposes of this fic, going to use the speculated date of January 6th as Sherlock Holmes' birthday, and it is set in the present because I don't know anything about growing up a few decades ago.
If you're feeling kind I'd greatly appreciate if you left a review with what you thought; I'm not at all sure if this is a fic that will even be read so any feedback is most welcomed.
January 5th, 2:06pm
(there is no grief like the grief that does not speak ~ Henry Wordsworth)
What Sherlock remembers most clearly about That Day is the cake. He remembers with perfect clarity not the winter sun glinting golden in his mother's hair, nor his father's somewhat rare smile over his shoulder nor the brush of Mycroft's blazer against his arm. He doesn't remember like it was just minutes ago the frosted white of snow on trees or the sound of the gasp his mother made as the car skidded. He remembers like the faintest whisper the bang and the shooting pain, the scream and the skidding, his father's hand clutching his knee from where he sits as though that will somehow keep Sherlock safe, Mycroft screaming as the world swirls by outside.
He remembers these things but what he remembers most clearly is after. It is when he is lying on the cold, wet ground with melted snow seeping through his clothes, his hair falling into his eyes and the wheels still spinning on their car. His mother and father and Mycroft are there too but Sherlock doesn't look at them, not yet. All he can look at is the cake.
It was going to be a nice cake; Sherlock had been looking forward to eating it all week. They'd had the baker make it specially. It said 'Happy Birthday Sherlock' on top in blue icing with a sugar model of a dinosaur, because he likes those at the moment. It was a Spinosaurus; those are Sherlock's favourite – he likes the bigger ones, he likes to think they're vicious enough that they could bite all the boys at school who push him down. They don't, of course, because they aren't real any more, but Sherlock likes to pretend.
The Spinosaurus is a little broken pile of green now and the cake his mother had been clutching in her lap is crushed. It was yellow sponge, once. Now it's red with blood from the road, a trail of it that leads all the way to Sherlock's mother where she lies broken and lifeless. Sherlock doesn't look at her; he's staring at the cake. It's congealing with blood, getting darker as it soaks in deeper and deeper. His cake. Hiscake, crushed, covered in blood but still smelling of warm, fresh sponge.
Sherlock doesn't know what to think, or say, or do, and so he cries.
He is still crying when the police arrive, and when he stops he doesn't make another sound.
It would be eight months before he spoke again.